A reminder that we're still in the relative infancy of the spaceflight era, and accidents still do happen:
SpaceX's Starship spacecraft tumbled and exploded in space on Thursday minutes after lifting off from Texas, dooming an attempt to deploy mock satellites in the second consecutive failure this year for Elon Musk's Mars rocket program.
Several videos on social media showed fiery debris streaking through the dusk skies near south Florida and the Bahamas after Starship's breakup in space, which occurred shortly after it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cutoff, a SpaceX live stream of the mission showed.
Amazingly, we even got what appeared to be a front-row seat to the very start of the rocket's collapse:
Observers from the ground, meanwhile, witnessed the rocket explode and begin a fiery descent back to Earth:
Air traffic was diverted across the Gulf of America and several airports in southern Florida experienced delays.
Thankfully, the catch of the Super Heavy Booster went as planned:
The Thursday test was meant to run the Starship through a series of rigorous tests to identify weaknesses in the craft.
Onward and upward!
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